The Romans came to Bath because of the water. Hot springs rise here at roughly forty-six degrees, and the legions built a sacred pool and a bathing complex around them in the first century, dedicating the place to a local goddess whom they merged with Minerva and calling it Aquae Sulis. The great bath is still there, green and steaming, below a Victorian terrace of statues. Over a thousand years later the Georgians remade the city in pale golden stone, the architect John Wood and his son building the Circus and the sweeping Royal Crescent, so that the place looks like a stage set for a Jane Austen novel. Austen herself lived here for several years and was not entirely happy about it.
Bath sits in the steep valley of the Avon, with hills rising on all sides, and the stone itself is dug from the local limestone, which glows in low sun. Pulteney Bridge, with shops built along both sides like Florence's Ponte Vecchio, crosses the river by the weir. The city is small and very walkable, but it is a magnet for visitors, so the centre is crowded and slow most days.
As a place to ride from, it is wonderful. Within a few minutes you are out onto the Cotswold edge or south through the Limpley Stoke valley, a deep wooded gorge where the canal and the railway run beside the river. Bradford on Avon is a few miles away, with its tiny Saxon church, and beyond lie the Mendip Hills, Cheddar Gorge and the Somerset Levels. The A36 along the valley is a good road, but it is busy with lorries. The better riding is on the B-roads that climb the hills and run along the ridge tops, with lovely views down into the valley and a mix of tight bends and fast, open sections.
Traffic inside the city is a headache. The ring road is clogged at rush hour, and parking in the centre is expensive, though motorcycles are often better treated than cars. Fuel stations stand on the outskirts, around Lower Weston and along the A4, and the centre has plenty of cafés, bakeries and the famous Sally Lunn buns, which are a decent way to start a ride.